Bayopic

A while ago I created a pixel font based on Herbert Bayer's Bauhaus alphabet, I suppose it could reside in the Bitmap Text area, as it does work pretty well in text settings (IMO) but I think display is right for now.

I think it looks beautiful; it works really well as pixel font. The only letter I have any problem with is uc Q. It seems like the vertical line at the bottom is a little bit too thick. You would only need to remove one pixel from the tail (or whatever that part is called).

Now, the rightmost 4 isn't good, it just doesn't look much like a 4. As for the middle one, it'll be much easier to tell if you provide of a few strings of different figures with 4 included.

As for the Q, have you considered making the tail one bit longer? It'll give you more flexibility.

Finally, you might want to consider providing of two different G's, a more usual one and the one with the long tail for special occasions. Anyway, between the two, I like the left one, with the longer tail, better.

I think 3 pixels of descender on the UC might be too much. I like the "Q" with nothing coming inside its body. I might descend the "J" too. The "4": if you're going to allow it to break the bounds I'd try OS nums all around.

That's my favourite Q too. And you're spot on about the captial descenders -- why the G doesn't harmonise with the Q anyway, I don't know. Not overly sure about the J, it may deviate from Bayer's original too much, but it's worth an experiment for sure, and all OS numerals -- that may be a bit too un-Bauhaus for me (or for Bayopic at least) :)

i'm no type historian, that's for sure. this pixel font may or may not faithfully obide by the original bauhaus alphabet's dimensions/porportions--i wouldn't know.

but i do feel that pixel fonts almost never work as 'renditions' of more sophisticated original typographic works. the reason is, that pixel grids just don't allow for the necessary nuance; the fine variation in width, and flexibility in diagonals to faithfully get the job done.

so: i'd like to see shorter descenders, a higher ascender on the 'k', less width on the 'x', perhaps even less width in the 's' and 'z', make an entirely new font out of the 'G' and remove it from this font, and although you have held a mathematically consistent width for much of the uppercase, it looks oddly inconsistent to me.

i'd try a narrower 'A', 'C', 'F', 'H', wider 'W', narrower 'Z'

also, you might try to make your x-height the same as your cap-height right now. make the whole font bigger. that way, your more sophisticated 'X' and 'N' and 'Y' might be used for the lowers, and bigger, equally sophisticated uppers may accompany them.

you'd also have greater control over the width of all of your uppercase characters, which is something you could use right now, in my opinion. one pixel taken from four is a lot more noticeable than one pixel taken from 6.

Thanks for your comments. FWIW, an example of Bayer's Bauhaus letters can be found here (check out the g and the k) (how the hell do we post images inline?).

As you can see, my pixel font is not a perfect 'pixelisation' of the letterforms, the c, g (to some extent), s, x and z exhibit differences that I choose to make bayopic more readable. For instance, the narrower x didn't work at all, it just got lost in the text, and curving the c in at the stroke ends just didn't work either.

I think re: the caps, it's important to note that Baypoic isn't supposed to be a text face. The caps and lowercase don't really harmonise because they didn't exist in Bayer's original, initial caps look out of place because they're so wide -- to fit in with the style, not the lc. (Though I agree with you re: the W, it's definitely too narrow -- it's the same width as the lc w for heaven's sake!)

I think I'll definitely create two faces:

Baypoic display: as seen above, with a wider W

Bayopic text: with narrower Uc, an extra px on the lc ascenders, and one less on the descenders, a less extreme g and a more conventional k.

And I love your idea of a uniheight version -- essentially, Bayer's alphabet was unicase anyway, caps have only been added by designers since. Definitely font-3 in the family :)